


Side Effects Include Death

by WinterDusk



Series: Not What He Intended [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, The Tesseract (Marvel), Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:55:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24238402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WinterDusk/pseuds/WinterDusk
Summary: When Loki opens his eyes, he is still dead.That’s the only bit of his plan that went as intended.
Relationships: Loki & Thor (Marvel)
Series: Not What He Intended [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1807195
Comments: 10
Kudos: 120





	Side Effects Include Death

_You know full well that is your actions that have brought you here:_ A reprimand from another time, but one still fitting.

The New Statesman smells of smoke and burning. Loki hears screams and weapons firing and tells himself that the stinging in his eyes is from the fumes.

There is no more time.

It’s all catching up, too quickly for thought or even to draw a steady breath. Thor’s down, Heimdall’s dead, Valkyrie’s gone and-

Loki’s left with a terrible plan. Terrible mostly because it’ll have to be paid for in blood, and there’s no one else’s blood available; not anyone that Loki’s willing to barter, anyway.

But it’s a plan that will work, because Thanos operates much like Thor does; he takes his purpose from strength and battle and honour, no matter how twisted that honour may be.

It’s a familiarity that should be reassuring, except that now he has Thor pinned, and trussed up to sacrifice. Just another corpse on his mad road to universal balance. He has the tesseract. Has the power stone. He’s unstoppable and-

But Loki doesn’t need to _stop_ him. Just to divert his actions somewhat. Because Loki can’t fight this – had tried, after the void, and found himself inadequate to the task. Had shattered instead and been reformed in accordance with the Titan’s needs.

So Loki will have to pass that batten; let someone else stop Thanos.

_Thor._

Loki doesn’t let himself hesitate. Knows that if he does, he will crumble. And if he’s going to die one way or the other, he’s _bloody well_ going to keep the title ‘Saviour of Asgard’ while doing so.

“I, Loki, prince of Asgard.” Like Thor, Thanos has a blindness to the power of words. “Odinson.” Even when they’re being used to force his alignment to someone else’s plans. To Loki’s plan.

Norns! But it really is his worst plan yet.

“Do hereby pledge, to you, my undying fidelity.” They tussle; the outcome unfortunately much as one would expect.

“Undying? You should choose your words more carefully.”

It hurts. Of course, it hurts; Thanos is killing him. But it’s also quicker than Loki would have expected. Doesn’t measure up to the torments he remembers previously.

But then, that’s because it’s not truly _Loki_ whom Thanos is torturing.

_Oh, Thor._

But it’s too late to help Thor any more than Loki already is. (And isn’t dying for him enough?) Too late to do much of anything now. From this point on, his every action is in his past; all fallout now set in stone. And yet-

Regret is not a new feeling.

 _And am I not your mother?_ And what cruel rejection had he offered to her? Did she know, somehow, _please_ , at the end, that he loved her still?

At least he’s made some amends. Of a type. _(My sons.)_ Found some measure of forgiveness. Of peace.

Thanos's fingers clench further. Pull Loki back to the moment; his last moment.

If it’s not the face he wants to see, dying, (if it’s not the death he wants) then at least it’s one final, perfectly executed plan: for Thor will live; the balance to Loki’s execution. Bound by Loki’s declaration, Thanos cannot help but have it be so.

Dimly he thinks he hears someone murmur, “No resurrections this time,” which is more than a little irksome, because Loki _knows_ that. But life and plans and even holding a grudge… they’re all fading away. _He’s_ fading away. It all suddenly seems rather distant.

 _Valhalla or Hel?_ That’s his living last thought.

When he opens his eyes, he’s still dead. But in no other way is this what he intended.

#

Shawarma, it turns out, is meat and vegetables and bread. It seems to come in sufficient quantities to fill one up, though that might be Stark’s doing. The only time he’s moved since they sat, it’s been to wave for fresh platters to be brought.

No plates are broken, if one discounts all the shattered pottery left by the battle.

By Loki’s war.

For a moment Thor just looks at the food in his hand and feels vaguely sick, but then common sense wins out and he takes another mouthful. He needs the food and its energy and Norns alone know when he’ll be back at his own table now that Loki has taken the tesseract.

 _To lunch and then Asgard_ ; words spoken when the day’s chaos had seemed to be calming.

Well, at least one of those has come true.

Another bite, swallowed. He’s too tired to reach for one of the sauce bottles, instead tracking Rogers as the man leans forward with a groan to pick one. Their eyes meet, and Rogers’s mouth twists; not a smile exactly, but not angry. Tense.

“Your brother hits really hard.”

“Not really.” Not previously. Yet today has shown a violence and insanity Thor had never suspected lurked within his brother.

That dread he’d felt when, earlier, he’d looked up from a collapsed Stark and seen Loki gone? The case open?

What harm will Loki do now? It would be nice to assume his concerns unfounded.

“I need to find him.” Even if Thor’s fears are false, and troubles with returning to Asgard aside, there are matters of justice and penance to consider. New Mexico, Jotunheim… those had seemed actions wrought of momentary unbalance, but this invasion has been something else. It must be redressed.

“We’ll all sleep better for that.” The Lady Natasha looks troubled, but her worry seems more for her companion, Barton. And well might she worry for him; the sceptre and its stone seem cursed. Certainly there is some dark enchantment about them. Who can guess what lingering effects the mortal may suffer under?

Mayhaps he should see fit to have Barton – aye, and Selvig, too – examined by soul forge once the bifrost is restored?

“The video footage…” But then Stark slumps forward, head buried in his hands, “Well, you’ve all seen it.”

Stark looks almost too weary to eat. To say that it has not been a good day for him would be putting it mildly. “Loki is skilled at evading detection,” Thor tries to be consoling.

Stark spits out a laugh. “And if it was just him…” He sits up, the better to count events on his fingers. “Unexplained momentum acting upon nominally securely locked briefcases; enraged hulks – and yes, you and I, Banner, _really_ need to come up with an effective hulk containment vessel – smashing up my lobby; a creepy moustached man-in-black who no one can ID; and then, the pièce de fucking résistance, Loki vanishing with the tesseract.

“How does me having a cardiac arrest barely even make it into _my own_ top five worst things to have happened in the single _hour_ since thwarting an alien invasion?”

Thor doesn’t have much that he can say to that. He takes another bite. Chews slowly. Maybe mother will have a spell that can locate Loki? Now that they know he is alive.

“It doesn’t make any sense. When he knocked me out, I thought…” Rogers shakes his head, face troubled. “But when I woke up, it was still there.” Compulsively he glances below the table as if to ensure the long, thin box has not vanished.

“We need to do something with that.” Barton sighs. “But not me. I’m done with it.”

“And not me,” Banner says. Which makes sense, as Thor gets the impression that the hulk/Banner is only partially on the right side of the local justice system, and so can’t be entrusted with something like the sceptre. But then Banner goes and adds, “There’s something… wrong with it. Like it’s angry,” leaving Thor frowning and thoughtful.

He hadn’t thought Banner perspective to Seidr.

Loki would know more; he always does. But if Loki’s responsible for those enchantments, then things are very wrong indeed.

He’s going to need to persuade Stark to keep searching for Loki. Thankfully that doesn’t look like a request that will be met with much resistance. It’s just that Midgard isn’t Asgard; Thor’s not certain _how_ mortals locate one another and-

“Could you track someone down?” It’s so close to his own thoughts, that it takes Thor a moment to realise that Rogers is the one to have spoken.

“Who?” Stark says. Picks at a loose shred of lettuce. “Why?”

Rogers doesn’t reply for so long that he ends up the object of everyone’s exhausted, wary attention. His face looks pale, like whatever is coming is bad. As what’s just passed has included space invasion, wormholes into the wider galaxy, collapsing buildings, and battling ‘til they bled, Thor can’t see how this is going to end well.

He takes another bite of his Shawarma, because if even _worse_ is coming, then he’ll have need of it.

“Bucky.” It’s almost a whisper; Thor can barely hear him. “Loki said Bucky was alive.”

“He’s playing you.” And Thor would agree with Stark, really he would. Except that he doesn’t even know who Bucky is, or how such a person could help Loki and thence be known to him.

But if they are together. “A search could-”

On the table, Stark’s phone gives out a shrill sound and vibrates – just the once – before lighting up. A disembodied voice cuts Thor off. “Mr Stark, I hate to interrupt-” On the screen a scene is playing out. It’s set in Stark’s lobby. “-but thought you might like to know-” And in that that image, there is a form. It moves and flickers; periodically vanishing all together. But Thor would know him anywhere. “-that Loki appears to have returned to Stark Tower.”

#

The whole realm smells like burning; worse even than the New Statesman. In the distance, Loki can hear hounds bay. This definitely isn’t Valhalla, and it doesn’t sound like any version of Niflheim he’s heard tell of.

As his mind races for comprehension, fear, worse even than those final moments with Thanos, starts to fill him. Because how, in the mere scattering of days since Ragnarok, had Loki forgotten that he’d managed to make an enemy of the Goddess of Death?

Not just any Goddess, but his adopted sister, who he’d left on a disintegrating Asgard after resurrecting Surtur to burn it all to embers? Why in Bor’s Name did he think they’d successfully managed to finish her?

And now he’s gone and got himself killed; has flung himself into her realm and her power.

He stumbles back a step.

Is startled to realise that he _can_ stumble back a step; that movement appears entirely possible for him. For, being dead, Loki should be entirely at the mercy of Niflheim’s queen. Should be held fast in place, awaiting his judgement. Obviously waiting’s a dreadful idea, so he takes advantage of whatever chaos has left him free to roam and, on the theory that anywhere else is better than where he’s _meant_ to be, flees.

Loki runs, and as he does, he tries to catalogue the unnaturalness around him. For Niflheim should be a place of cold and mist. Not this twisting labyrinth of dirt and dust and smoke. The path to Hel – indeed the path to Valhalla – is fraught with danger for living and dead alike. For this is not a realm like any other dangling from Yggdrasil’s strange reality-engulfing boughs. Down here, at her base, where her taproot drinks from the wyrd wells of Urdarbrunnr, Hvergelmir and Mimisbrunnr, things are… ever otherwise.

Only the Norns lie deeper still.

Loki has no wish to meet anyone here; Norns or Goddess alike. No. He’d prefer to reach Valhalla. Or, at a stretch, anywhere that isn’t ruled by Hela. He has to escape.

Alas, realms are not like planets. They are not easily navigable by compass nor chart, for they are not solely bound up of space and time, but also Seidr. Unfamiliar as this realm is, it seems that, for every step Loki takes, he moves not further from danger, but rather deeper into Yggdrasil’s root system.

He turns a twist and-

Is this some strange punishment, devised by Hela? Maybe she _does_ know he’s arrived and is toying with him.

Yet Loki cannot help but take a step further. To take another. His boots should click on the polished marble, but the space around him is indistinct, almost unreal.

From the corner of his eye, he sees something blurred move and, only with the most absolute of concentration, does it resolve into a being. A mortal of Midgard, from the looks of its garments, apparently shouting into a device Loki sees clearer than the hand in which it’s held.

Of course, the mortal is indistinct; it is living, while he is dead.

Loki stumbles back. Feels Niflheim begin to coalesce around his senses and pauses.

If this is some honeyed trap, set out to capture him like an insect in his death, then isn’t it better to fall for it than to endlessly pacing his sister’s halls, waiting to fade into obscurity?

Doesn’t it look more interesting?

He presses forward. It’s hard going. Like walking up a hill that grows steeper with every step until, breathless with effort, he feels confronted by an almost perfectly sheer wall. The lobby beyond is clear enough to be familiar. He still remembers the hot embarrassment of crossing it, sometimes, when he dreams.

And he can hear the clatter of armed mortals as they spill out into the space, guns gleaming and at the ready, even as their features are scarce more than mist filling out balaclavas.

Can such weapons even touch him here?

He raises his hands more out of humour than concern. “Why, sister, you _have_ outdone yourself.” But what does she want him to _learn_ from this?

Thor appears.

There are people with him, mostly hard to tell apart. Loki thinks he spots Banner; clearly Heimdall’s last sacrifice worked. And Stark is sharply visible; his chest, where his shining little toy of an arc reactor lies anchored, is clear, bordering on glowing. Loki wonders if he’s meant to mention that apparently it’s killing the man.

It’s hard to make Thor out, which is probably all to the good, considering. Since Loki’s died, he’s evidently had time enough to grow his hair back out, and over his shoulders spills a cloak red enough with Seidr to glow even to Loki’s dead eyes.

Apparently Thor hadn’t been wrong and Earth has been a welcoming place for the battered remnants of their people.

(So maybe Loki’s death has granted a second benefit.)

It’s as Loki feels relief shudder through him, that he wonders when he stopped considering this place to be some twisted torture device of Hela’s and started to hope this gives a true glimpse of his brother in the realms of the living.

It doesn’t seem quite right, and certainly isn’t anything that he deserves.

Loki tries to take a step closer to Thor, but slips. Everything around him seems to flicker and – distantly – Loki can hear Stark shouting: “Spread out. Find him! He can’t have gone far,” which is a charming misunderstanding of the situation.

There are other words, but they seem faint. For, further from the living now, Loki can hear baying.

It’s distant yet, but a chill passes through him, and he presses forward again with renewed purpose. For the hounds had cried with a hunting purpose, and Loki fears indeed that he is the one that they target. If the hounds are coming for him; if this moment isn’t a trick – if it’s true and honest and he’s somehow got one over on Hela, even just briefly – well, then he needs to see Thor. Needs to know it went well and so was worth it. That Thanos is gone and-

“Thor.” But Thor is indistinct; just armour and a red cape and-

For a moment Loki’s struck dumb by the familiar vambrace. Remembers them quite clearly from their battle on Earth, and the outrage he’d felt looking at his own horned helm, rendered as mere stylised embellishment on his brother’s body armour.

Second time around, and the bitter flush of irritation’s no kinder. Look at Loki’s brother! Strutting about, making a big show of remembering his ‘dead’ brother like-

_Loki, I thought the world of you._

Maybe for Thor is really is that simple. No manipulative tactics deployed to engender sympathy. Maybe he does – truly – just love Loki and wish to honour his brother.

Loki’s eyes burn. It’s probably just an effect of whatever’s in the Niflheim air.

Maybe he’s allowed, just this one moment, to hope for the best? “Brother?”

And, like a wish-granting dream, Thor draws nearer. Loki can even hear his voice, though the words are still faint enough to be drowned below the far-off howling. Even distant their voices are terrifying, but for just this moment Loki refuses to let himself fear her dogs. Not while he can have what he wants.

Thor is almost close enough to touch. His face seems to swirl and reform, buried in mists and obscurity, but it’s a face Loki’s known his whole life. He doesn’t need to see it to know how it will look.

“Loki?” Clear as a bell; his name.

But it’s said wrong. Thor’s wrong. He’s angry.

In that moment, Thor’s face seems to grow clear, just briefly. And Loki’s left cold; his dream more truly a nightmare. For this isn’t Thor.

#

“Your eye.”

Loki’s a thousand things he needs to explain. Midgard, the Chitauri, Jotunheim, the Destroyer, being alive, choosing to die. On any one of those subjects, Thor would love to question his brother for days without end. Some of the conversations would be conducted angrily, others in a tone entirely baffled or even pained.

So why is it that the first words he hears from his brother’s lips cause more questions, not less?

Irritation, never exactly gone, overflows. It’s been held in check for hours by mingled worry and confusion. But now? Faced with Loki’s flickering-double trick? “Where are you? Where’s the tesseract?”

They need to get back to _Asgard_.

 _Loki_ needs to face up to his crimes. To take his punishment and-

“Tesseract? When is this?” Not-Loki’s pivoting on the spot. In between the moments where his whole face seems to vanish, he’s frowning. On anyone else, Thor would assume the expression meant they were confused, maybe even alarmed. On Loki, interpreting it is a different matter altogether.

“Loki! Stop this pretence and-”

“Pretence? I’m not pretending anything. What is the _year_? Thor! Answer me and-” They are talking at cross-purposes, as ever. And the small, fragile corner of Thor’s heart that keeps hoping, despite everything that Loki has done to him, that maybe they can sort things out, dies back a little further.

With it, his anger ebbs, leaving only endless, empty sadness, “What is this mockery, brother? Have you not brought shame enough upon us all?”

And Loki jerks, apparently stung. “Shame?”

It’s such a break from the arrogant joking of earlier in the day, that Thor tries to take heart from it. Tries to reach out once more. “Is it mother? Are you ashamed to go before her in chains?” Truly, it is nothing more than Loki deserves, and yet the two of them have ever been close. “Brother, come back. Cease this folly. Stop making this worse, and trust me to help you.”

But between the mists, Loki’s face is twisting; bitter and outraged and despairing. Thor has lost him.

Behind him, Thor can hear Stark’s instructions. Knows that there will be a search going on. But Loki has the tesseract. He is armed with a near-infinite source of power, and still his double is fracturing. It stands to reason that Loki must be very far away indeed.

“You’re saying I’ve escaped?” Loki is looking around, face mockingly curious, before morphing into suspicion. “Is this after the invasion? It is, isn’t it? Why would you think I have the tesseract?”

“Hey.” A warm hand catches his arm; Stark, face more wan and troubled than ever. “Give it up; he’s just here to rub salt in and get his laughs.”

The truth of that is like acid over Thor’s skin. That Loki loves him so little; trusts his even less. That he’s toying with them. It’s going to break mother’s heart; Thor’s no idea what he’ll tell her.

“Come on.” Stark is trying to tug him away. “There’s nothing to be gained here. Roger’s has got the search under control.” And dimly Thor’s aware that he must look bad, if the man’s willing to let someone else run a search centred on his own tower.

He takes a step back from Loki.

“Thor!” There’s panic on Loki’s face, but is it genuine? Thor doesn’t know any more. “Thor! I’m from the future! I’m dead and I’m from the future! You have to listen to me!”

“Don’t.” Stark’s not holding him back, exactly. Isn’t strong enough to even if he wanted to try. But that single point of contact is the only thing that’s holding Thor together. _Why would Loki choose to lie about being dead? Again._ “He’s not from the past. He can’t be, because he doesn’t know what’s happening and time doesn’t work like that. It’s fixed.”

“Time can be changed,” Loki says, “if you travel between multiverses, because it’s not exactly changing time then. And if you’re right about past-me having the tesseract, then maybe I’ve left this multiverse. Which makes some sense of how I’m here _now_ and not where I’m meant to be, because the threads of the universe aren’t in balance and Niflheim was always a bit odd anyway. I mean, Thor, you know what I’m-”

“Thor.” It’s hard to peel his eyes away from Loki. From a Loki who is breathing and talking and leaving Thor sick with horror at his actions and still giddy with relief at his survival. “There are whole theories and studies and it’s… You’d probably find it dull and, trust me, the whole field is a complete waste of time, but you can check that with Jane. He’s just trying to get into your head for some-” Stark makes a complicated hand gesture towards his head “-reason. What he’s talking about would need energy on an… impossible scale and-”

Stark’s not wrong.

It breaks something in his heart, but Thor turns to go.

#

Loki says what he does, because it’s the only thing that makes sense. But Stark’s face is sceptical and as for Thor-

The last and only other time Loki was in _this_ time, there’d been Thanos and the Chitauri. Everything had been a bit too much, and his thoughts weren’t a hundred percent his own (although they were more his own than he sometimes likes to remember).

Mostly, when he thinks back to this time, Loki recalls Thor being angry and shouting a lot. Though Thor had made various sentimental declarations about brotherhood, they fundamentally made no sense considering the magnitude of the damage Loki was engaged in. And, at the end of it all, Loki hadn’t overly worried himself with seeing things Thor’s way, when generally that way had included acting as their father’s instrument.

The first time around, it really hadn’t occurred to Loki that Thor had been honestly upset. It’s rapidly becoming apparent that this was a big omission.

Another thing to add to this list of things he’s completely missed over the centuries.

Well, it doesn’t look like it matters much now. Their conversation’s over. Thor’s going and – as, judging from the sound of them, the hounds are ever closer – if Loki knows what’s good for him, he’ll take this time to make himself scarce as well. To flee again. So much for closure; he’s no idea what will happen to Thor and their people; not in either timeline.

He’s actually turned to go, Midgardian marble morphing into grit and smoke, before he acknowledges that he doesn’t want to leave. A lifetime of feeling like he’s living in Thor’s shadow and now that he’s literally a shade, the only thing Loki wants is to stay near to his brother!

Not that Thor wants him. Maybe Thanos hadn’t been so far wrong in emphasising Loki’s tendency to failure. And what weak comeback had Loki managed? _I consider experience, experience._ How does all that experience help him now, trapped with Hela in a burning perversion of Niflheim?

_You might want to take the stairs to the left._

_The Allmother is dead._

He can’t believe he’s been so _slow_.

For, if this is truly just after the invasion-? If the convergence hasn’t-?

Loki can hear movement in the distance; the scrabbling of claws against stone. He needs to _leave_! But Thor is also leaving and may not return; Hela may capture Loki and bind him beyond escape. And mother-

“Thor!” He turns back to the vision of Midgard; to this window onto the living. Tries to scrabble and claw at the divide between them, but feels further away and more lost to the living than ever. “Thor, he’s coming!”

This howl is long and low and drawn-out. They know they’re closing in.

Sweat breaks out on Loki’s neck. He needs to _go_.

In the real world – the past real world – Thor appears to pause. Or is it merely an artefact of the swirling haze?

“He’ll _kill_ her, Thor!”

Loki looks, because he cannot help it. A quick darting glance over his shoulder, that he then wishes he’d not taken. There are so many things that he has no time to say, but there’s time for one more:

“Malekith is coming!”

Loki runs. Hela’s hounds give chaise.

**Author's Note:**

> This is (mostly) set in the splinter universe formed when Loki vanished. I really _did not_ intend to write this. But lockdown does funny things to the mind, and I _could not_ escape this idea other than by pinning it down. I hope that you liked it!
> 
> P.S. I’ve not put an archive tag on for ‘Major Character Death’ because Loki’s already dead in MCU. Please let me know if you think this needs changing.


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